On the one hand, that might seem like an overly simplistic response to an important question. And I have to admit that it is, but I am trying to make a point. The practice is the practice is the practice. At its core, mindfulness practice is simple, but the challenge is that it isn’t always easy.

In situations where we are particularly captivated by worrisome topics or situations, our mind’s tendency is to go to the content of our worries, to try and solve the problem, or simply become immersed in anxiety and fear. Our minds like to serve up a big heaping bowl of delicious, enticing, anxiety-provoking fruit, and we can’t resist snatching an apple of anxiety or pear of panic, when our real task is to simply be the bowl. See if the next time worry arises, you can instead notice worry. Perhaps tuning in to sensations in the body that accompany worry, notice how worry actually feels, and let the thoughts that come with worry rush past you as if you are sitting beneath a waterfall that is pelting you with thoughts and you’ve just chosen to take one step back and watch the thoughts fall. You might even practice a bit of self-compassion and soothe yourself with a gentle touch of the hand to your heart, not to get rid of the worry but just to acknowledge that worry is present and you are suffering in that moment.

This piece originally appeared in Mindfulmagazine in the recurring feature “Am I Doing This Right?”)

“My boyfriend doesn’t want to meditate. How can I persuade him to do it? I think it would help him.”

I recommend a high, whiny, annoying vocal tone and if you can muster up a few tears, that would be amazing. Another option would be to let go of needing to change your boyfriend’s behavior and instead tend to your own practice. Nothing is more convincing than the embodiment of mindfulness practice that allows others to see their own selves in a different light because of the way in which those around them carry themselves. Unless, perhaps, you’ve already been effective in getting him to pick up his dirty socks from the floor of his apartment and wind the toilet paper the proper way on the roll in the bathroom. In which case, you’ve got mad skills at boyfriend motivation and I wish you well on the direct approach.

This piece originally appeared in Mindfulmagazine in the recurring feature “Am I Doing This Right?”)

Is it OK to start out with the idea that I’ll keep meditating until I don’t feel like doing it anymore, or should I choose a set period of time?

First of all, to some degree if you sit down to practice meditation, then it’s always OK. The real question is whether a certain approach is advisable and whether it supports a regular and beneficial practice. I can also tell you what would happen for me if I decided not to meditate for a set period of time and just meditated until I didn’t want to meditate. I believe my average time per meditation would be somewhere in the range of 30 seconds to a minute, tops.

As long as that’s where you’re aiming for your daily practice, go for it.

But most of us aspire for a tad more practice on a regular basis. The challenge is, of course, that the “not feeling like doing it” is simply a thought that the brain has offered up as if it is a truth. But what are thoughts anyway? Really, they’re just brain secretions. They have no inherent truth or fact to them, and they often come and go fairly randomly. When we settle in to the cushion or chair and allow our minds to settle as well, we can see the coming and going of this thought stream, and we don’t have to latch on to any given thought.

Setting a time to practice (even if it is a modest goal for you) allows you to have the stability of your intention (to stay in practice for a set time), which leaves you less subject to the impact of a random neuron firing that leads to an equally random thought entering your awareness. It is the stability that is developed through repeated encounters with all of the phenomena of attention—including ideas about having meditated enough—that deeply serves us in our daily lives when we are virtually bombarded with thoughts, feelings, sensations, and clowns. Well, the latter is a little less frequent, but remember, they don’t always wear makeup and big floppy shoes. They come in all forms and sometimes they’re kinda creepy.

(This piece originally appeared in Mindfulmagazine in the recurring feature “Am I Doing This Right?”)

On the one hand, that might seem like an overly simplistic response to an important question. And I have to admit that it is, but I am trying to make a point. The practice is the practice is the practice. At its core, mindfulness practice is simple, but the challenge is that it isn’t always easy.

In situations where we are particularly captivated by worrisome topics or situations, our mind’s tendency is to go to the content of our worries, to try and solve the problem, fix the situation, or simply become immersed in anxiety and fear. Our minds like to serve up a big heaping bowl of delicious, enticing, anxiety-provoking fruit, and we can’t resist snatching an apple of anxiety or pear of panic, when our real task is to simply be the bowl.

See if the next time worry arises, you can instead notice worry. Perhaps tuning in to sensations in the body that accompany worry, notice how worry actually feels, and let the thoughts that come with worry rush past you as if you are sitting beneath a waterfall that is pelting you with thoughts and you’ve just chosen to take one step back and watch the thoughts fall. You might even practice a bit of self-compassion and soothe yourself with a gentle touch of the hand to your heart, not to get rid of the worry but just to acknowledge that worry is present and you are suffering in that moment.

(This piece originally appeared in Mindfulmagazine in the recurring feature “Am I Doing This Right?”)

Only you know the structure of your life, but along with noticing that you don’t have an extra 30 minutes a day lying around where you wonder how you might possibly fill it, I’d like to encourage you to take a moment to contemplate a different question that might lead you someplace helpful.

Why are you asking the question?

Specifically, what is it about mindfulness practice that is compelling enough for you to consider trying to squeeze it into a day that is presumably as packed as the proverbial clown car at the circus? And might even include a few random actual clowns, depending upon where you hang out!

What is it about mindfulness practice that has moved, touched, or shifted something in you, that you are inclined to try to practice it regularly? Can you connect with that instant, that feeling, that lightbulb moment that hooked you?

If you’ve never meditated and you ask about when you will find the time, then this won’t necessarily work for you. But if you’ve practiced and found yourself wanting to practice more, then you have connected with that deep part of yourself that needs the practice and that will truly help you find the time to practice.

Give that little spark of wisdom and ease a time and a place to smolder and ignite, even 5-10 minutes a day if that’s all you can find, and see where it leads. I think you’ll find the time, and maybe you’ll be able to boot out a couple of those clowns to make room for a formal practice.

(This piece originally appeared in Mindfulmagazine in the recurring feature “Am I Doing This Right?”)

This morning as I lingered outside the meditation hall before morning practice, I came upon the biography of E.B. White. I randomly opened the book and this is the verse that I found:

The critic leaves at curtain fallTo find, in starting to review itHe scarcely saw the play at allFor watching his reactions to it

It helped me realize that the Inner Critic (like the Drama Critic) always dwells outside the “play” itself, or outside of our direct moment-to-moment experience. That experience of each moment is the center of three concentric circles where that center circle represents safety, the next circle out represents challenge and the largest circle is overwhelm. The critic’s harsh voice comes from the outside in, can tangle us in overwhelm or just pummel us at the level of challenging. But we can find some refuge in the safety of the inner circle of moment to moment experience.

In fact, the area outside of the safe circle is really where we most often live our lives, because this is where we connect with other people, encounter triumph, tragedy, love and loss.

So I think of mindfulness as learning how to find our safe circle and how to make our way back to the refuge of the present moment when we are caught in reactivity and suffering. It is here in this safe circle where we can find our feet, where we can be nourished by our own resources and become clear on our values. We all have different degrees of ability to return to that safe circle but we all have some capacity.

While “pure” mindfulness can give us refuge in the present moment, it can be dry and cold just living in bare attention of each moment in our safe place. We actually live at the edges of that circle or even beyond, and something in us is curious, wants to be connected and even wants to be challenged, if only in a small way.

Compassion by itself, disconnected from the wellspring of the present moment can be kind and warm, but scattered, unfocused and in the end unsustainable because it can’t be easily replenished.

When we bring compassion, and particularly self-compassion, to the practice of mindfulness then we actually gently expand the circle of safety into the area of challenge so that we can feel some ease in challenge, engaged in the sometimes messy (but also fulfilling) world of suffering, self-criticism, Mara or the dragons that lurk beyond the charted territories of ancient maps. By warming up the conversation we can actually build ourselves a progressively bigger platform from which to live, that allows for a bit of permeability (if that’s called for) between safety and challenge. This new expanded presence can allow us to hear the inner critic, to invite in the wisdom of a compassionate being, or to consider the need that has not been met by others so that we can provide it to ourselves.

By remembering that the critic lives in the space around the safety circle, we can be reminded that this is where our attention and our compassion should be directed if we seek change or relief. We cannot dwell on the presence of difficult feelings or challenging other people if we want a way through our suffering. We can only tend to the relationship we have with the feelings or the people and how we can meet those unchangeable facts with some degree of warmth and kindness that can relieve the suffering in wanting things to be different than they are.

There are few moments in the past 15 years, since beginning to practice mindfulness that I have felt outmatched by the challenges to my equanimity.

But the current political situation here in the U.S. is putting my practice to the test and I could really use the support of my friends and colleagues in the field to support me through what I am experiencing. This is not about who to vote for, or who not to vote for, but something even bigger and more timeless than that. It is about how to have compassion for the people we find truly, profoundly, deeply repugnant and fearful.

Have compassion for everyone you meet,even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit,bad manners, or cynicism is always a signof things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.You do not know what wars are going ondown there where the spirit meets the bone.

I admit that I “do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone” in Donald Trump, but I also am struggling mightily to bring my compassion practice to bear on this man. I have practiced Loving-kindness meditation many, many times over the years, and guided others in the practice, often incorporating “the difficult person” into that practice, but never have I found it so difficult to do so as I have with him.

When I am intentionally cultivating compassion and invite him into awareness the well runs dry, so to speak. I simply cannot connect with my usually-present wellspring of compassion because of my gut-level emotional reaction to him and his behavior. Perhaps this is not far from what a victim of violence might feel toward his or her perpetrator, but for me, this is a deep and disconcerting struggle.

In less reflective moments, I find myself musing wistfully about actual physical harm befalling this obviously wounded man, and that is also entirely unfamiliar. And frankly quite jarring and unsettling to boot.

I find myself mirroring the name-calling, ridicule and disparagement and simultaneously not wanting to be stooping to that level.

When I see the way all sides in the political debate retreat into divisive tribalism, name-calling, blaming and bigotry, there is a very deep part of me that does not want to be swept up in it as well. I know my strong opinions play a role here, but how do I find a way to bob on the surface of this tidal wave of hatred and fear and be able to truly look deeply inside and know that I have met difficulty with a truly open heart? This practice can’t only “work” on the easy, the mundane, the routine and the familiar. It has to hold us up and carry us through when the stakes are truly life-altering, if not outright life-threatening. How do I find my feet in this tsunami of reactivity and find a way to navigate forward with some sense of clarity, wisdom and most of all, compassion?

And once my feet have been located, the big question for me is about the way forward. Is there an action that can rise above my reaction? There is the practice of “fierce compassion” that calls us to mobilize when there are wrongs that need to be righted, as Sharon Salzberg says “to feel outrage when it arises . . . and to cultivate power and clarity in response to difficult situations” but it’s that clarity that that seems remote and inaccessible at this pivotal moment in history. I find myself mirroring the name-calling, ridicule and disparagement and simultaneously not wanting to be stooping to that level. I have to admit that I’m a bit ashamed that I find myself doing this and that has my head spinning. My options feel narrow and mostly insignificant. I am overcome by fear and easily seduced by the fleeting pleasure inherent in schoolyard taunts and snide Facebook posts.

I don’t know what to do except to breathe, to give myself compassion for the fear and terror that rises in me for the future, for myself, for my friends, for my children and for this planet

I have to say I was inspired by what appeared to be a throwaway line in President Obama’s convention speech: “Don’t boo. Vote” That sums it up but I’m left asking if this is enough. Just silently voting seems so incredibly small, which is how I actually feel, when I think about it. And I want to be bigger. Bigger than this small self of mine, bigger than the rhetoric and the bigotry, big enough to hold myself tenderly and soothe my trembling heart.

I don’t know what to do except to breathe, to give myself compassion for the fear and terror that rises in me for the future, for myself, for my friends, for my children and for this planet. Maybe this is enough, to collectively take a moment (and a breath) to pause and let the visceral reaction to this predicament run its course, so that collectively we can breathe out together and do what needs to be done. I take some small comfort in knowing that many of us across this country and around the world are also feeling some version of this dread and that we share the common humanity of that experience. But somehow that isn’t enough to sustain me. What is a person to do? I really don’t know.

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Are You a Skeptical Meditator?

Stuck in Meditation is the hub of an online community formed for the sole purpose of supporting the mindfulness meditation practice of people who have learned to meditate, whether on their own or through formal training programs like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) or any one of a number of other "MB-Anythings" that are proliferating like wildfire across the globe.

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Meet the Meditator/Blogger

Steven Hickman, Psy.D. is the Director of the UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness and has been teaching meditation, primarily in the form of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for 11 years. He is a clinical psychologist in the UC San Diego Departments of Psychiatry and Family & Preventive Medicine and is a leader in the UC San Diego Center for Integrative Medicine.
After having taught over 75 Mindfulness classes over the years, Steve has had the opportunity to guide skeptical meditators through the process of learning mindfulness and helping relieve their suffering through the practice. He hopes to expand the scope of his teaching and guidance through this blog and your participation in it.